ABSTRACT
Societal attitudes or practices which change dramatically within a short period of time may offer a better opportunity to identify any role that individual psychology plays in altering social institutions than do such changes that evolve slowly. This chapter discusses three institutions that currently present such opportunities. One involves changes in what is considered a normal developmental phenomenon of adolescence, namely risk-taking behavior. The other two phenomena are particularly interesting because they involve changes by adults in the direction of embracing practices that heretofore had been considered undesirable and hurtful to children and adolescents. The chapter explores that a universal developmental response, involving vicissitudes of identification with one’s parents, is a necessary factor for such sea changes in societal attitudes to take hold and be perpetuated in the next generation. Adolescents, too, are strongly motivated to retain an underlying sense of their parents' approval.
